6:55 First letter of objects on table (Scissors, Piano, Apple, Dice, Elephant) spell SPADE 9:26 First word of each clue, SEA EL EWE BEA (CLUB phonetically) 11:14 Lowercase letters read in order spell HEART

Imagine trying to play scrabble against this guy...

CLUB - 9:27 Sea, El, Ewe, Bea (are pronounced like C L U B) SPADE - 8:37 Scissor, Piano, Apple, Dies, Elephant. (First letter in each) HEART - 11:15 (h, e, a, r, and t are the only lowercase letters in the grid) DIAMOND - The pin on his chest (his right side, our left side) is changing letter throughout the video, spelling out D I A M O N D Edit: the letters spelling out Diamond are not in order. To get them in the right sequence you need to look at the color of his shirt. The letters are then placed in order of the color of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet)

This guy must have such a large vocabulary

Making a good puzzle is way harder than solving it.

cru·​ci·​ver·​bal·​ist (noun)- the most unnecessary but awesome word I have heard in a while

I saw Kwong create a puzzle at his live magic (and puzzle) show using words submitted by the audience; I think he completed it in under10 minutes. It was phenomenal, as was the rest of the show.

Am I the only idiot who didn't notice any of those changes throughout the video?

I feel dumber than ever.

Actually quite fascinating the thought that goes into creating every puzzle. Well explained!

9:49 “and voila! now you know how to make a new york times crossword puzzle” ...no i dont

When he speaks i feel like he’s dumbing it down so we understand

"I want to make people feel smart" Well that's ironic because whenever I try to solve a crossword puzzle I feel dumb af.

For people saying these clues were really hard, I think they were pretty fair. Looking for case differences is very easy, and I'm sure most people got this one right away. The others had the camera focus directly on the solutions/clues at points in the video. In general, if something is being randomly focused on and you know there's a puzzle, it's probably a clue. For example, why did he only make clues specifically for those words? And then the camera zoomed in on the paper. Earlier there was a point where the camera pans over the objects whose first letters spell out SPADE. The objects are also placed very prominently on the table, are of similar size and are in focus and in frame when the narrator is sitting, further giving us a chance to ponder their significance. Being patient and methodical also helps a lot! You don't need to be a genius to be observant and doing puzzles regularly can get you into the habit being more observant in your daily life! Your mind is like a muscle and you should exercise it to keep it strong and healthy. Plus puzzles are fun!

the first letter of each item on the table - scissors; piano; apple; dice; elephant - spells SPADE

this guy is pure genius ! love the way he hid the puzzles in the video !

So I was a little bit confused when he mentioned seemingly random rules like "must have rotational symmetry" or "each letter has to be accessible across and down"... until he mentioned this is a New York Times Crossword Puzzle. I've been doing European-style ones like Bumper Big Crosswords (UK) my whole life and I don't remember such patterns. Also, hiding themed words inside other words? And clumping two words (that should be spelled with a space in between) together, like marqueename or zacefron is okay? Or that the daily crosswords get progressively harder as the week goes by? Huh. The more you know. Is this just the NY Times cruciverbal "house style", or is this how most American crossword puzzles look like? Not having a go, honestly curious

As a "non english speaker" I had never heard of 90% of the words in the puzzle... lol

The pheonetic pronuciations of the first words of each clue that he wrote down would spell out CLUB - sea (C), El (L), ewe (U), Bea (B)

things on the table 5:50 Scissor.Piano.Apple.Dice.Elephant SPADE At 9:27 the clues start with SEA(C), EL(L), EWE(U), BEA(B) . Spells CLUB At 11:15 Simple letter from left to right starting from the top spells heart

Who is here after watching the Try Guys???

I love that this guy admits Will Shortz rejected him several times before he finally broke through. My father and I were a constructing team for years and never got published; seemingly for mostly silly reasons. I wish we’d kept at it.

So the guy making the crossword looks up the answers on Google as well? Good to know.

My elderly mother loves doing them. I got sick of buying crossword puzzle books for her, so I created massive ones for her. Kept her busy for days

holy freaking barnacles, i’m in love with this guy

I love crossword puzzles and have always wanted to create them. Yours is the first video that bring clarity to the process!!!!

Huge respect to the guy. He is so cool. And he is really living the dream.

i was so amazed by the process of how a crossword is made that i didn't even notice the letter pins & the colors of shirts changing ... big "woah" moment !

I imagine this guy transforming a regular first date into a huge puzzle where things like location or food have to be found based on clues hidden in different random spots of the city.

I *love* this and am now starting my first puzzle creation, for a holiday gift. Thanks for sharing these ideas! I've loved your puzzles over the years.

Yeahhhh... Ima just wait for other people to solve it. LOL...

I still have no idea how he did that. It feels like he places some random words, and then out of nowhere he can get words with the letters in place. Like that FACEOFF, found in like a tenth of a second that perfectly fits

Very nice how he used the magician's skill of misdirection to perform the DIAMOND trick. You'd just assumed it took a few days to actually finish creating the puzzle, thus the different colour shirts... if you even noticed the shirts were any different while you were paying attention to how the guy goes about filling up the grid.

This dude is such a puzzle nerd!! Loveit, just imagine when his girlfriend asks him where the keys are and he starts giving hints and clues haha

I saw him do a live demonstration using the periodic table of elements as the theme. It was really cool and a fun event! The crowd was stunned. 😮

I love videos like this where it sounds interesting and I give it a shot. Then get really into it because of how cool and surprising it turned out to be...

Great creativity and extras, David!!!

11:14 lowercase letters left to right spells out h-e-a-r-t

For some reason I read this as: “Pizza Experts Explains How a Crossword Puzzle Is Made” And thought the thumbnail was all pizza boxes.

I could swear this process was at the very least semi-automated. I always imagined a database of words being fed to a system that arranges the puzzle. Different clues are assigned for each word, and the clues would be chosen based on desired complexity (or even just to differentiate each puzzle). Seems like I was wrong!

the creation of a crossword puzzle is a puzzle in itself

The F,Z is difficult I thought of Fez right when I saw it.

Everybody needs to see his Crossword Puzzle Magic Trick. It's dope AF!

I didn’t get any of the other puzzles cause I’m watching this in bed lol but I did see that he used “one” in one of his clues before literally saying he can’t use answers in the clue.

Pin changes- diamond Items on table- spade Lowercase letters- heart Clues on paper- club 9:27 Explanations: Pin changes to OIDMONA, turn it into roy-g-biv order with the correspondng shirt color and get diamond Lowercase letters in the crossword puzzle are h, e, a, r, and t "heart" Clues on paper are "SEA safety" (c), "EL paso" (l), "EWE mate" (u), "BEA arthur won for "mame" (B). "club" Items on table were Scissors (s), Piano (p), Apple (a), Dice (d), and Elephant(e) "spade"

I was thinking that you need to overlay the maze at 0:42 to the completed Crossword at 8:21 to get the answer. (The maze looks to be a 15x15 grid like the crossword with, in my opinion, a weird route/solution. I spent a good hour trying to overlay and thinking I need to mirror the route due the the solver of the maze being behind the glass maze. I tried reading the maze route, backwards, mirrored, mirrored backwards, reading just the corners of the route, and I even tried to overlay the maze on the crossword at 1:00 . But I guess the maze had nothing to do with the crossword. :P )

WOW, a magician and a puzzle designer, nice!

So Ted Mosby was right, "Its because of the vowels!!!"

0:16 “There are problems *everywhere* ” wow if that isn’t me

kakashi: those who solve puzzles are smart obito: but those who makes them are smarter

I'm surprised "Face Off" wasn't used as a clue for the theme. There's certainly some wordplay available on "face cards."

Did not anticipate a mention of Most Def, but I'm here for it

This honestly looks fun. Much more fun than solving one. What a great gig, he explains it well!

Not sure changing shirt colors was necessary. There aren't a lot of words that share the letters in diamond

Serbian crossword puzzles are 12*12, but here is the kicker... there are ONLY 18 black spaces. This is the standard in the main Serbian newspaper 'Politika'. Also, the choice of locations for the black spaces isn't free but instead there are about 20 or so different symmetric and aesthetically configurations. In specialized crossword magazines, the puzzles are larger and the black spaces are no longer fixed, but these puzzles pride themselves on having an extremely small number of black spaces. There is usually at least 8*8 zone or even larger that is completely bereft of them. They are also usually thematic.

This is a science and artform simultaneously, fascinating.

I was so sure the puzzle had to do with the maze he drew near the beginning (which while rough, has basically a 15x15 grid) mapping onto the eventual puzzle, and you get a phrase which might start with MARS, tying back to Maenad and the greek stuff... I'm still not sure he wasn't going for that too, I just can't quite line it up haha

at 5:24 he's talking about the movie FACE OFF and uses a gesture that seems unnecessary. it happens to be the ASL sign for "beautiful".

PLEASE MORE OF THIS GUY IN THIS SPECIFIC SETTING!!! -it gives me a calming feeling and I presume others feel the same

you dont know its hard until you actually MAKE one

having a bachelors in mathematics, having read many of the star wars expanded universe, and owning all of star trek on dvd I feel uniquely qualified to make the following statement. NNNNNNEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDD!!!!!!!

Oh, David, you're such a card!

bro i gotta make a crossword puzzle for a thing i volunteer in and now i have to watch these videos

this would be a good way to memorize definitions for a class. I'm sure someone's done that already but it isn't being done enough!

what a straightforward tutorial! time to make my own!

Never really cared for the craft of crosswords until I randomly tuned into a tik tok live of a guy doing NYT crosswords. I never knew so much creativity and genius went into creating a crossword puzzle. I was always stumped at the revelation of the long answer of each puzzle

I am totally creating a crossword puzzle section in the student newspaper! Answers will be in the following issues!

First time a KZfaq video blow my mind

I think the real puzzle here is writing some software to replace him.

Genius level. Mixed-media next level solving fun!

He & Will Shortz are the coolest nerds of all time.

Ive made these before he is making it way harder than it needs to be.

His Pin changed 7 times, O I D M D N A... Diamond! Very proud of my self

I was so focused on the dice on the table expecting them to change what numbers were showing...didn't think to consider every object on the table

My brain works like this. I want to make crossword puzzles now! But could there be much employment out there for puzzle making...?

"Bea Arthur won one for 'Mame'" uses the word "one" which is in the crossword as well

anyone here after the try guys played him

This guy did the wired video on illusions too

I thinks one is SPADE.. The Scissors, the Piano, Apple, Dice, Elephant... and it matches the theme too

This is definitely a job I could automate.

Is those "rules" an American thing, or just a New York Times thing? In Norway most crosswords are asymmetric and has plenty of two letter words. Even one letter words are not uncommon, though though those are pretty simple because it can only be 'i' (Norwegian for "in"), 'å' (Norwegian for either the infinitive marker or a rare word for 'river') or 'ø' (archaic Norwegian/Danish for 'island'; usually spelled 'øy' today).

this made me feel very dumb I didn't know what half those words meant

Harnessing the power of regular expressions

Look up this guy's other videos, he does amazing crossword magic tricks!

9:27 You said you can't use the word "one" but you used it when putting "Bea Arthur won one"

This might be my most favorite KZfaq video ever!!!!!!! I’ve always wanted to learn how to create a crossword!!

There is a guy name called vijay in tamilnadu a student of abdulkalam now people needs him support him👍🙏

we had to make crossword puzzles in 8th grade in biology never knew this was supposed to be so complicated

how come for the clues, you are able to write "Bea arthur won "one" for "mame", when the word "ones" appears in the puzzle?

He’s makes creating a puzzle look so easy

my dumbass saw the giant letter M in the back and was waiting for it to give different letters and completely missed his shirt changing colours hahaha 🤦🏾‍♂️😂

I noticed the letters but I couldn’t see them clearly enough.

Awwwwwwwww nice video! I really love crosswords, but as a foreigner who doesnt speak English as a native language, those puzzles, even the easiest ones are still naturally impossible to me despite that i have been learning English for almost 10 years. I dont even know the word rebound (not until i looked it up), not to mention words like "Renoir". My vocabulary basically deprived me of the chance of trying those puzzles, and im really sad :(

Dude this guys a genius.

god the puzzle was so meta

I have always thought they have some AI for this 😮

People look at his shirt throughout the video. He was changing between different color shirts

you are very cool and make this look easy! would like to try my hand at puzzle design i’m inspired!

You sped through the part I really wanted to see.

creating a crossword actually looks like a more fun puzzle than solving one